Eleven years ago, I attended the funeral of Michaela McAreavey in St Malachy’s Church, Ballymacilroy, Co Tyrone. It was an unforgettable day, for many reasons. One of which was that it seemed the universal revulsion at her murder on honeymoon in Mauritius had brought out the best in people here.
ack then, I wrote how in years to come people would still struggle to make sense of how a kind and devout young woman with her whole life opening up in front of her could fly off on holiday days after her wedding and return home in a coffin. Amid that dreadful horror, it would have been unimaginable that, just over a decade later, a song would exist which mocked her death and the grief of her family.
But shamefully such a song does exist and this week it was broadcast to an unsuspecting world via a video released on social media from a drunken indoors function apparently under the auspices of the Orange Order’s Northern Ireland centenary celebrations.
It is hard to describe how distasteful it is, how vile, how low the life would be who would find such appalling behaviour acceptable. Men with mothers, sisters, wives and daughters laughing at the brutal killing of a 27-year-old teacher.
The song, of course, is fuelled by sectarianism against Michaela and her Catholic family.
Yes, it isn’t in any way representative of Ulster Protestant feeling. No, it’s emanating from the knuckle-dragging outliers of loyalist opinion and loutish behaviour – male, misogynist, callous – and is in no way common or mainstream.
But nonetheless it must be owned by unionism. It demonstrates just how little influence any of the better spirits of unionism have over a tract of the population and it describes again something of the challenge ahead.
The Orange Order’s swift statement condemning the “utterly abhorrent” video and its pledge to investigate the sickening events and discipline any members who took part is to be welcomed. As is Linfield’s hasty sacking of a coach who appeared to be involved. No doubt other families and businesses and organisations will also have to issue similar mortifying statements.
It would be easy to think this place is awash in sectarian bile but I haven’t detected a scintilla of malice or sneering from nationalist friends about the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Ok, perhaps a little post-modern ironic banter from the wits, but that’s all part of a general atmosphere of curiosity, goodwill and conviviality. Some watched it on TV. Others waved children off to commemorative events.
It’s a point worth reiterating because it repeatedly gets lost in a place where discourse is dominated by mouthy types and the toxicity that dominates social media – a platform which amplifies extreme opinions.
Responses to Arlene Foster’s damehood typified the process – political dislike coupled with misogyny prompted a bitter shower of abuse. There are many other examples, of course, from across the political spectrum, but few seem to be as dressed up as ‘political’ critique as assaults on the former DUP leader. No one’s legacy can be summed up in a tweet.
Foster is a bigger personality and a better person than her critics and the royal accolade is one evidence of her continuing value to the community.
Commentators here stereotype our politics to the point of melodrama – as if we consisted of slavering monocultural groupings in outfits matching the kerbstones. Everything, even down to the panels on Question Time, reflects this blocking out of opinion.
Yet it is not only possible but indeed common to find those who would identify as nationalists or unionists with varied and complex interests and commitments.
Sinn Fein blocking the planting of a rose bush at Stormont to mark the Platinum Jubilee was a missed opportunity, not only as a gesture to unionist sensibilities here but also as a signal to nationalists about what toleration can mean in practice.
Back in 2011, during the Queen’s historic visit to Ireland, and the following year when she visited Belfast and shook hands with Martin McGuinness, then Deputy First Minister, and later when he took the political risk to attend the royal banquet for President Higgins in Windsor Castle, there was a real sense that anything was possible.
It was a moment of re-set in relations between the two islands – only idiots can’t recognise the power of symbolism between nations and peoples. Sometimes, it takes genius to realise that a handshake can achieve what a document of a thousand pages fails to do.
Sadly, there is no doubt that the momentum of that early 2010s period has almost been entirely lost.
Brexit and the invention of the Protocol haven’t helped. But those don’t excuse the breakdown of vision and action in the here and now, how the temperature has been allowed to rise degree by degree over recent years, how basic systems have been allowed to run down.
This column has said repeatedly that the onus is on the Irish government to woo Ulster Protestants and unionists. That’s a simple fact. It is also a fact that no wooing happens.
There also has been and continues to be a responsibility among unionist leaders to ‘do politics’ with leaders elsewhere on this island, to build the relationships which ensure mutual support and benefit. That hasn’t happened either.
Both these are absolutely indispensable. Any who cannot see this are deluded. Any who persist in doing nothing will be historically culpable.
How sad it all is. We need courageous action by leaders. Michelle O’Neill’s letter this week to Her Majesty, recognising the monarch’s role in peace-building, can be a significant step for all of us. It echoes the gestures of the recent past which had such transformational impact. It will have been recognised with surprise by unionists, just as it may have dismayed some nationalists, but given many on every side pause for positive thought.
In March 2017, Dame Arlene Foster reached across the divide at the funeral of Martin McGuinness to applause from the congregation. Back in 2011, in Ballymacilroy, Peter Robinson, then DUP leader and First Minister, visited the bereaved household of Tyrone GAA legend Mickey Harte whose beloved daughter Michaela was.
It really shouldn’t take grief to unite our peoples. But recognising the pain would be, yet again, a good place to start.